Re:Patch runs ed, and ed can run anything
by username223 on Thursday April 05, 2018 @05:27PM
(#16768910)
This bums me out, too. Back in the day, you didn't have to treat all programs and data as hostile, because they weren't. Nowadays the GNU linker whines about calling gets(), but that wasn't a problem, because you knew that a 32-character stack-allocated buffer was big enough to answer a yes-or-no question.
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Re:Patch runs ed, and ed can run anything
by microtherion on Thursday April 05, 2018 @06:11PM
(#16769230)
Yes, but "Back in the day" ended with the Morris Worm at the latest, and that's coming up on its 30th anniversary today.
Re:Patch runs ed, and ed can run anything
by username223 on Thursday April 05, 2018 @07:15PM
(#16769621)
That's fair -- the Morris Worm was an early demonstration that user-hostile software could easily make everyone's life worse. It still sucks that, as modern coders, most of our lives will be spent either producing or defending against hostile software.
Re:Patch runs ed, and ed can run anything
by Piskvorrr on Thursday April 05, 2018 @05:47PM
(#16769046)
Because the world was a nicer place back then, or because the computers were far less useful and thus mirrored the world far less?
The latter. As long as it was bunch of nerds doing nerdy things, nobody cared. As soon as computers started processing things relevant to regular people, the regular people happened, and with them all the incentives for hostile behaviour.